Do animals grieve? What elephants, apes and dogs can and cannot tell us

Some animals clearly react to a death in striking ways, but whether that is grief as people feel it is still debated. Emotions in non-human animals are a controversial topic, and the evidence has mostly been anecdotal, from people who interact with pets or captive animals. Critics suggest that anthropomorphism, reading human feelings into animals, motivates how such behaviour is interpreted.

The elephant stories are the most moving. Scientists often debate how far elephants feel emotion, yet elephants are one of few mammals besides humans and Neanderthals known to have a recognisable ritual around death. They show a keen interest in the bones of their own kind, even unrelated elephants long dead, and are often seen gently investigating them with their trunks and feet while remaining quiet. The ethologist Cynthia Moss observed a mother elephant walk sluggishly at the back of her family for many days after the death of her calf. When a baby chimpanzee or gorilla dies, the mother will commonly carry the body around for several days.

Now the cautionary tale. Owners are often sure their dogs look guilty. In a well-known experiment, owners told their dogs not to eat a treat and left them with an experimenter, and on returning were given a random report on whether the dog had eaten it. Dog behaviour was more likely to be read as guilty when the dog had not eaten the treat, and the strongest correlation with behaviour was whether the owner scolded the dog.

The balanced view is that basic emotions such as fear are rarely disputed, but anthropomorphism may lead people to think animals show more complex emotions than they do.